Story highlights

US promises retaliation for Russian hacking ahead of presidential election

Former Soviet leader Gorbachev decries "dangerous point"

Washington (CNN)It's not a new Cold War. It's not even a deep chill. It's an outright conflict.

US-Russia
relations have deteriorated sharply amid a barrage of accusations and
disagreements, raising the stakes on issues ranging from the countries'
competing military operations in Syria, disputes over Eastern European
independence and escalating cyber breaches.

"This
is a conflict, there should be no doubt," said Matthew Rojansky,
director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, on the US-Russia
confrontation.

Russian
President Vladimir Putin meets with his President Barack Obama on the
sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou on September 5, 2016.

On
Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the US was
considering a "range" of "proportional" responses to alleged Russian
hacking of US political groups. Washington publicly accused the Kremlin
of cyberattacks on election systems and the democracy itself last
Friday. That came after talks on a Syria ceasefire broke down as US
officials suggested Russia be investigated for war crimes in the
besieged city of Aleppo.

Meanwhile,
Moscow abruptly left a nuclear security pact, citing US aggression, and
moved nuclear-capable Iskandar missiles to the edge of NATO territory
in Europe. Its officials have openly raised the possible use of nuclear
weapons.

And that's just the highlight reel.

The
friction between Moscow and Washington -- by many assessments at its
highest level since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- led Mikhail
Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, to make a plea Monday
for dialogue and de-escalation.

"I think the world has reached a dangerous point," Gorbachev warned, according to Agence France Presse.

"This needs to stop. We need to renew dialogue," Gorbachev said, commenting on the US decision to call off Syria talks.

Russia moves nuclear missiles to Europe border02:14

"Indeed,
it's not a Cold War," said Igor Zevelev, former director of the
MacArthur Foundation's Russia office. "It's a much more dangerous and
unpredictable situation."

It's
unlikely that tensions will ebb anytime soon, with the very real
possibility of a building tit-for-tat dynamic developing at a time when
channels of communication between the two capitals have dwindled.

A
Western diplomat said past confrontations between the West and Russia
followed a typical pattern of a slow escalation and a mutual
understanding on both sides when it was time to stop.

With
Russia's actions in Syria, its decision to put nuclear-capable missiles
at NATO's doorstep and its cyberattacks, the diplomat said, "you have
the impression they are escalating by themselves and going to the
extreme."

"This is a very different
system," the diplomat said. "When you listen to these new Russians,
this is not the strategic balance that we knew. It is unusual and
dangerous."

Recent incidents
include harassment of US diplomats in Moscow and Russian claims that its
foreign service officers are badgered in the US, several occasions in
the past year when Russian jets and naval vessels have buzzed the US
military and Moscow's 2014 violation of a core security treaty by
testing a ground-launched cruise missile. The list goes on.

"The
quality of relations between us is certainly at the lowest point since
the Cold War," said Russia's ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. "The
risk of miscalculations has increased," especially with NATO forces
"being deployed next to our borders," Kislyak said in remarks at Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The
ambassador said that "normal channels of communication are frozen"
between the US and Russia. "We see the United States taking unfriendly
steps toward Russia including sanctions, there are calls for isolating
Russia," he said, adding, "it doesn't work with Russia and it's not
going to work."

Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov told interviewers from Russia's Channel One that
Moscow had pulled out of the nuclear security pact on plutonium on
October 3 because of "aggressive anti-Russia tendencies at the basis of
the US policy on Russia."

He
pointed to NATO deployments, infrastructure and missile placement as
examples of "aggressive steps that have a direct bearing on our national
interests and can affect our national security."

On
the US side, Lavrov's counterpart Secretary of State John Kerry led the
call for a war crimes investigation into Russia's actions in Syria and
has said that the US will retaliate for what it sees as interference in
the 2016 presidential vote.

"They're
not, quote, 'getting away with it' for free," Kerry said Monday in Palo
Alto, referring to hacks on US election systems and political parties.

Russian
presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations as
"nonsense" on Friday, according to the state-run Interfax News Agency.

Even
so, the US has sent Russia a "very clear" message about "the
unacceptability of interference with democracy in the United States of
America," said Kerry. He warned that "we will and can respond in ways
that we choose to, at the time of our choice."

Kerry doesn't believe Russia will affect the election02:19

In light of the tensions, Gorbachev urged a "return to the main priorities" between Russia and the US.

"These
are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of
an environmental disaster," he listed. "Compared to these challenges,
all the rest slips into the background."

Yet
change any time soon is unlikely. Russian President Vladimir Putin has
consolidated his hold on parliament and looks set to be re-elected
within the next 18 months.

He has a
prickly track record with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton, who he accused of instigating December 2011 demonstrations
against him while she was secretary of state. For her part, Clinton
joked in 2008 that then-President George W. Bush couldn't have gotten a
sense of Putin's soul, as he had claimed, because the Russian president
is a former KGB agent and that means "by definition he doesn't have a
soul."

The Republican presidential
candidate, Donald Trump, has repeatedly praised Putin, downplaying
Russian actions in Syria and on hacking, and at one point calling on
Russia to help probe his rival's email accounts.

"I think it would be great if we got along with Russia," Trump said Sunday at the second presidential debate.

Regardless
of who inhabits the White House next, Putin isn't likely to alter his
course. Aligning Russia with Syria, countering the US at the UN Security
Council and pushing back against NATO by flying bombers along the
western Atlantic coast in September, among other moves, serve the
Russian leader at home.

"You'd
think 'why is he worried,' but there's clearly concern on some level" on
Putin's part about the upcoming presidential elections "and this shores
up his popularity," said Angela Stent, director of the Center for
Eurasian, Russia and East European Studies at Georgetown University.

It
also distracts Russians from the economy, which the Eurasia Group,
among other analysts, assess has a long-term negative outlook.

"It
helps to have an enemy if people are feeling the economic pinch," Stent
said. "If people think we're going to be at war with the US, they
forget about the cost of food."

The
cyberattacks may also represent a kind of payback. Putin "really
believes the US is responsible" for the December 2011 demonstrations
against him, Stent said. He may be telegraphing, "You think you can
interfere in our elections? Well, we can do the same thing, too," she
said.

There are global elements to
the Russian leader's strategy that also signal continued tensions. Putin
is "driven by big ideas about Russia's role in the world," said
Zevelev, a fellow at the Wilson Center. Putin wants to limit America's
world leadership role, curb what he sees as an American inclination for
"regime change," and show that Russia too can use military force to
achieve foreign policy goals.

"Putin
wants to assert Russia as a global power with great ambitions," Zevelev
said, "and in order to demonstrate it, Moscow has to do something in
the world arena from time to time."

The
Wilson Center's Rojansky said Russian "messaging is clear -- 'if we are
not getting what we want on one front, we will escalate on other
fronts.' "

Moscow could do that by
reigniting frozen conflicts in Europe, Rojansky said, taking on other
regional interventions or even aligning with China to support Beijing's
aspirations for dominance in the South China Sea.

And he pointed out that the Russians "have signaled in a couple of ways that they are willing" to use nuclear weapons.

"This
is the most dangerous time since I don't know when," said Stent of
Georgetown University, who added that the next few months before the new
US president takes office will likely be eventful.

"Russia
understands they have another couple of months until January where
nothing much is going to happen, and why not take advantage of that,"
she said.